


at swim

by salemslot



Series: kid fics [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Friendship/Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Kid Fic, M/M, Summer, Swimming Pools, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, happy boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 16:13:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15222887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salemslot/pseuds/salemslot
Summary: July 13th, 2007: Ian taught Mickey how to float.





	at swim

**Author's Note:**

> tw: a slur here or there, referenced child abuse, drug abuse mention, internalized homophobia
> 
> This takes place months after 'to sleep, perchance to dream' in summer. Ian is twelve now, and Mickey's twelve. This is in Mickey's POV.
> 
> Before this series goes further I should mention things like porn, dicks, sex, drugs, etc are going to be convo topics between them and other characters. The big thing is that for most of the series they're underage. I'm trying to stay true to how boys (specifically in-character Mickey and Ian) think, talk, act and compare themselves as they're growing and changing. They're going to be crass even at 12, like in this part, but nothing mentioned is intended to encourage premature and reckless activities...
> 
> That said, anything detailed will be when they're NOT underage and it will be tagged.
> 
> I'm sorry for any mistakes. I'm usually way better at editing after I've posted already so... most mistakes will be fixed in the following few days.

When it started getting hot outside Mickey’s wounds had long since healed. All that was left of Halloween night was faint scars that were overridden by the vibrancy of his freckles in the sweltering sun.

Mickey’s brother Jamie shaved Mickey’s hair into a mohawk in celebration of passing the school year as one of the oldest fifth graders. He would always be older than a lot of his peers, since his dad hadn’t bothered to place him kindergarten until he was six. His brother loved to point it out at the peak of every June as Iggy, who was only a couple months his senior, pulled ahead of Mickey by two entire grades.

Mickey grew half an inch since last fall. He started sprouting blond hairs on his armpits and inside his underwear. He wouldn’t notice unless someone pointed it out to him, but he’d gotten a bit stronger. He can now carry Mandy’s spider-monkey ass over his shoulder with more ease. He could also pull his weight over fences when he was getting his comeuppance from people he’d crossed and hustled.

He watched lesbian porn on the old clunker computers at the library when the librarian left his desk and went on his walkabout. He learned how to shoot a gun at his dad’s makeshift targets under the L. He ate for a family of four. He first experienced lice three times over this last spring. He was started to smell worse than ever. He discovered Colin’s Slipknot CD and it changed the course of his young life.

He hung out with Ian religiously, like the sky was breaking off into pieces and falling toward them, like time was extremely limited.

Except, it hadn’t been. That was the most surprising and unusual change of all. Mickey seemed to have all the time in the world with his best friend. He clenched his teeth and battened down the hatches moments before spring ended, sure that his dad would make the announcement that he took a summer job trafficking again. That announcement never came because Terry had been missing since the second Friday of May.

The last time any of them had seen the man he was heading north to Winnipeg, maybe because he was on the run from something. That’s how Mickey always saw it, anyway. If there was more to it, he wouldn’t understand and think in simple terms about his father’s aloofness anyway. His dad’s business operations were like vague, black clouds in his mind’s eye. When he left, he saw him open the front door and sink into a filthy polluted fog where danger bubbled at the core. When he came back alive every other night, Mickey saw the haggard man in a strange heroic light. Heroic was not the right word. Heros were the men and women on Mickey’s water-damaged Marvel poster that hung crooked over his bed. They were not bad men who who got involved in stuff he couldn’t make sense of yet: _Laundering. Narcoterrorism. Straw purchasing_ —the words laid out in steel block letters in his head, spelled incorrectly.

Good guys tried to stop people like his father, that’s why he was constantly fleeing. He only touched base at home when it was necessary.

What constituted a good guy, really?  The fictitious people in his comics did not exist. They had trigger-happy cops and people who’d only treat your ailments half-assed at a clinic, or for the price of you internal organs at a real hospital.

They had a community of people that couldn’t give two shits about where the ratty Milkovich gremlins ended up, whether that was beneath their own parent’s fist, in jail, or dead.

Mickey didn’t know of any real heroes. If he had to pick someone it’d be a person like Ian’s older sister, and maybe, on days when he missed the woman more than he hated her, his own mother. In the meantime, he’d admire his abuser, who he was terrified to turn his back on, brainwashed into wanting to be loved by. He had no one to help him figure out what kind of man he wanted to be; there was only one person, who _told_ him, and accepted nothing else. Mickey would do anything for him.

_Pops, I want to be just like you. Brave. Smart. Needed. I hope someone always needs me. I don’t care what for. I don’t care if it’s for scary stuff I may never understand quite right. I don’t care if it might get me in trouble some day. I don’t care if it will kill me. I’ll be needed._

Mickey didn’t mourn his absence. He smiled more. He slept better.

Sure, he knew Terry would be back. He wasn’t dumb enough to think he was home free. Him and Mandy still joked about running away and ‘ _emancipation_ ’—a word they’d learned from Lip. He hadn’t abandoned them _yet_ —and so they still were under his thumb like helpless little bugs. Mickey would never have the willpower to acknowledge how sick it was to tell your father’s steel-toed boot goodnight instead of the man himself, so running away was a huge improbability. But, Mickey was overjoyed when he noticed he hadn’t been back in days, which extended to weeks. He rubbed his hands through his hair and grinned into his fists while his eldest brothers stormed about the house, pissed that they’d have to get in contact with his clientele. That’s when it became official. The dude would be off the grid until Christmas, most likely. It was the same old song and dance.

He celebrated with Ian by playing Halo 2 for six hours straight until they fell asleep on top of each other with Cheeto-stained lips.

 -

July 13th, 2007

 

Mickey was beyond happy. It was something out of a dream being at Ian’s this summer instead of Indiana with a slab of cocaine between his back pocket and asscheek. He didn’t even mind that he was soaking wet, dripping all over Ian’s bedroom carpet, waiting for him to find a volleyball wedged in his closet.

The fucker was taking forever, but Mickey couldn’t wipe the stupid smile off his face. He stood quivering, shaking his hands and hair out all over everything like a puppy with a cruel agenda.

Ian crouched low in his shark-print swim trunks, his buttcrack peaking out the top of waistband. He was grunting, throwing armfuls of clothing to the side and then plowing headfirst into the moldy-towel nest in the very corner. He burrowed his way through to reach a ball that was the crown jewel of an Indiana Jones-level voyage. Mickey rubbed his mouth and laughed hard into his palm when Ian emerged through the cloth jungle with a yellowed, peeling Wilson in his hands. His wet body was stuck with lint and hair. “Ah ha!” he gasped.

“Dude, how long has that thing been rotting in there?”

Ian flashed a dumb smile and pushed himself out of the mess onto his feet. Clothing of all three Gallagher brothers cascaded down the small hill he formed. “At least since last summer. I think it’s water-logged.” Ian made a curious face and shook it next to his ear.

Mickey grew impatient as his teeth chattered. “Alright, _Little Mermaid_ . You ain’t gonna hear the ocean in that thing. C’mon, I wanna get back in the pool before my nuts freeze off.” He crossed his arms and rubbed his hands over his biceps. He should have taken his towel with him. Fuck, if he’d have known the Gallaghers were splurging on top-notch AC systems he’d have brought his _snowboard_ . This shit was awesome. He’d slept like a baby last night next to Ian, curled up in Ian’s green comforter while the tip of his nose and ears reddened in the chilly room. The thought of going back to his own humid, sticky home that had been conquered by gnats and rat piss made him want to burn the whole place down. That way he’d _have_ to kick it with Ian in this frosty paradise.

“Huh,” Ian mumbled. He was bouncing the ball on the inside of his wrist, doing a decent job of keeping it in the air. “Freeze your nuts off? I could have sworn you already lost your nuts yesterday screaming like a chick when that girl died in _Freddy vs. Jason_ ,” he recalled smugly. “Ian, you big strong man, protect me! Hold my hand!” he imitated with a poor, high-pitched version of a petrified Mickey.

Mickey’s skin went from chilled to feverish in seconds.

“What if Jason crashed through the window _right now_? Would you keep me safe?! Would you fight him off with your impressive muscles and carry me to safety? Oh, what a regular John McClain!”  Ian squealed, sounding like a distressed old bitty now.

Mickey knocked the ball out of the air so it smacked him square in his freckled face with a dull thump. “Oh you wish, cock muncher,” he scowled.

Ian hardly acknowledged the pain in his face other than by squeezing his nose. He smiled behind his hand. “It’s true you were scared though. C’mon, Mick, that movie was so _lame_.”

Mickey pushed him. “I told you what would happen if you brought that shit up!” he threatened. So it scared him a little. What the fuck ever. The spurting blood looked crazy real coming out of Jason’s chest when he was jabbed with iron pipes. This kid had the balls to bring it up after Mickey squeezed his wrist until he promised not to talk about it.

Ian wiggled his eyebrows and his smile grew. This little prick was taking it as a challenge.

He was never scared of Mickey, and it was fucking unnerving. When they first met and Mickey warned him that he’d hurl his wooden block at Ian’s penis if he even thought about taking the last of the Lincoln Logs. He was building his dumbass military fort. Mickey was on the verge of creating the world’s longest wooden sword with heaping amounts of glue to hold it all together. Needless to say, Ian was delighted by Mickey’s attitude and confidence. He shoved the Lincoln Logs into his pants to see if Mickey really would take his dick off with one throw. He didn’t. He hit his taint on accident while Ian was laying on the colored-square carpet. Ian cried, but then afterward, Jesus, the moron couldn’t get enough of him. He refused to leave him alone.

Ian picked the ball up from the ground. “If you want my nuts for a trophy you gotta catch me first, and you’re as fast as that plastic neon kid at the crosswalk that says ‘slow’ on the side of—ah!” he burst into a laughing fit when Mickey swiped at his shoulder and missed. He was out the doorway in a flash.

“Fuck, you’re dead!” he swore and lept after him. They giggled maniacally as they left drops and puddles in their wake all through the hallway. It was hard to be upset when they were slipping across the hardwood like morons.

Mickey grasped for Ian when they reached the stairs. Ian yelped and shoved him off. He struggled to catch himself before almost tumbling back flat on his ass. He managed to keep upright by grabbing hold of the wall’s corner and used it as leverage to fling himself down the stairs, following Ian who was cautious but quick barreling down toward the first floor.

“Hey! Hey!” Mickey heard Fiona yell from the kitchen. Mickey concentrated on not stepping on the puddles Ian was leaving in front of him.

Ian jumped over the last five steps and landed hard on the rug. He regained his footing after spilling over and grabbed the staircase post to swing himself into the alcove under the stairs, crashing into whatever boxes were stored there. Mickey was mere inches behind him and dove though the star-printed sheet that acted as a curtain for the tiny space. Ian chucked the volleyball at Mickey’s belly before he tackled Ian and sat on his arm to pin him down. He shoved a nearby quilt into his mouth.

“I surrender! I surrender!” Ian laughed around a mouthful of cloth. He tried to wedge his arm out from under Mickey’s ass.

“Say you’re a big fat butt sniffer!” Mickey demanded and shoved the blanket in further to fill out one of his cheeks.

Ian grunted like a wounded animal and tried to roll over. “Never!” he choked.

“What the hell?!” Fiona stormed into the living room wielding a melted spatula in her right hand and an empty plastic bowl in the left. She looked disgruntled and exhausted from barbecuing for the whole family since ten in the morning. Mickey felt bad.

He stopped immediately and blinked with wide eyes through the gap in the curtain. Ian spit the blanket out and panted hard with his eyes closed.

“Are you two seriously runnin’ around in the house soakin’ wet? Look at you!” she fumed. Mickey had enough decency to keep his smile at bay under her deadly glare. Ian, on the other hand, quirked a grin that he kept hidden in the shadows. He was a ballsy little shit, whether he knew it or not. Lots of times he had more guts than Mickey could ever dream of having.

“I told you to get the goddamn volleyball and you didn’t dry yourselves off beforehand. Now you’re racing around here like a couple’a mutts, soaking up the stairs? Who’s gonna clean it up? _You two_?” She jabbed the spatula at them and gave them a sarcastic look, complete with her brows up and her eyes round with curiosity. Then it dropped completely, back into a merciless scowl.

Mickey was impressed with how terrifying Fiona could be. Even though he saw her as a kind surrogate sister that held the burdens of what seemed to be every fucked up kid on the block. She was a no-nonsense hard ass who could carry a family of four plus Mickey and Mandy on her back. The world didn’t even have to be ending for her to display such badassery.

“Get your asses outside!” she demanded. She placed the backs of her occupied hands on her waist, watching them scramble out of the curtain and to the door before they got scolded by the fire that would soon shoot out of her mouth.

They roughhoused all the way off the porch and raced each other to the pool. They cheesed so hard the wind could have got caught in their cheeks and pushed them back onto the grass like parachutes.

Ian threw the ball into the water. He lifted himself over the side of the above-ground pool and made a big splash. He almost hit Mandy with the ball and then with his foot while she floated along the edge on her back. When Mickey dove in after him, causing the water to lap over the sides in small waves, he actually _did_ snag her.

“Ow, fucknuts! What the fuck?” she seethed and got back onto her feet, holding her forehead where Mickey’s fist hit.

Lip was on the far side of the circle, sinking below the surface until only the top half of his head peaked out. His curls were and stringy tangled mess hanging over his eyes and his smile directed at Mickey was sly, pushing into his elongated cheeks. He was a prowling shark weaving between the stray fallen leaves.

Mickey hated his creepy ass. He was pretty sure he always would.

Ian swam up beside Mickey and Mandy slapped at the both of them. They held their arms up to guard their faces.

“You shit-for-brains! What did Fiona say about using the ladder?”

Mickey rolled his eyes and leaned his back up against the wall. “Okay tit-less C. J. Parker, go patrol someone else’s waters, will ya?”

Mandy’s face twisted in pure little-Milkovich rage underneath the wet strands of her bob. She pushed an armful of water at his face.

Mickey whined and shut his eyes tight. He didn’t see Mandy jump onto his body like an enraged octopus. Her long limbs coiled around his torso as she tried to shove him below the surface. Insulting her flat chest made her pissed enough to forget that Mickey hated being off his feet in the pool. Thinking back, maybe he should have known better.

He began to panic.

Ian’s light chuckle was clipped short when Mickey took a mouth full of water down his windpipe and fought to keep his head up with her bony fingers clawing at his stripe of hair. Ian told her to stop.

Mickey pissed himself, and luckily no one noticed and no one ever would, nor would he ever admit that he had, but he felt his muscles loosen in fear and the warmth spread down his thighs and wrap around his flailing legs.

His lungs were beginning to contract around the pool water. A hot burn trailed down his insides like he swallowed magma. Maybe he’d been too rough with Mandy before. He’d pulled chunks from her hair and gave her nasty bruises. At worst, he shoved her and she sprained her wrist. Her trying to drown him in front of all the Gallaghers pushed the ongoing war between them a little too far. What a fucking bitch.

He couldn’t do anything but gag and bumble around like a blind manatee. She had him in a headlock and clung like a demonic backpack. If Lip wouldn’t have plucked her off eventually, he’d have been a stiff floater a couple seconds later.

Ian took Mickey’s arm and wrapped it around his shoulders before leading him to the ladder so he could sit on one of the rungs. Mickey barked up what felt like bits of lung tissue and half the ocean’s aquatic life. Ian rubbed and thumped his back. “Jesus, Mick, are you okay?” he asked, worry etched across his face.

Mickey groaned and held his aching stomach. The droplets hanging off his lashes looked like teeth and the water lodged in his ear sounded like a goldfish was swimming around his brain. Who the fuck really liked to swim, anyway?

“You bitch!” Mickey snarled at Mandy, who was panting hard as the fire dissipated from her wild gray eyes. She wiggled away from Lip’s arms. He protested when she swam closer to Mickey again, worried she’d stir shit up again.

“I told you not to—” she started, but cut herself off and looked at Ian and then back at Mickey. Her cheeks looked like two big strawberries and she shamefully dipped down to cool them in the water. She folded her arms over her chest, hiding her body that was clad in a new two-piece. She had been nervous to wear it today.

It dawned on Mickey as fast as it dawned on Mandy that she couldn’t say what she wanted to with Ian around. Mickey felt a little sick, and not from swallowing the Chicago tap.

Ian frowned at the confusing silence. The only noise was from the back porch where Carl was messing with his LeapPad book he got grounded into using instead of swimming.

“Well… “ Ian started, cautious. His eyes lingered on Mickey and then tore away to speak to Mandy. “He doesn’t like to swim that much, remember? You can’t just wrestle around in here, Mands. It’s not safe.” Lip snorted from where he almost lost complete interest in the topic, paddling across the diameter of the pool. Mickey burnt holes through his fucking nipples with his eyes. “Shut up, Lip.” Ian chided. Lip sank without another sound.

Mandy melted at the sound of Ian’s soft, careful voice. She looked like she’d never have another cruel intention for the rest of her life. Mickey rolled his eyes and wondered if being unconscious at the bottom of this thing was actually the prime place to be. Maybe he’d ask Mandy to give it another go but really put in everything she had this time, no pussyfooting around.

It was bad enough that he knew why she was anxious to get a swimsuit when Fiona took them shopping. She wanted something weird and tight that made her look all grown up and mature for _Ian_. She got a padded top and with thin noodle straps and it gave her tiny tits a little bit of lift. Mickey wanted to claw his own eyes out every time he looked at her. It was fucking nasty and it infuriated him that she wanted Ian to notice her in that way… and since fucking when did she start liking him? It was disturbing like watching Jason get impaled with scrap metals at a junkyard.

They’d all grown up around each other. Mandy was just an annoying clone of Mickey that would badger him and Ian when they played games. She’d demand she have a turn, even if it wasn’t something that could just rotate players like Old Maid, Cootie build-a-bugs, or bloody knuckles. That’s how their dynamic was and how he’d thought it'd always be.

Until her nipples started pointing outward under all her shirts and she made Mickey steal a training bra for her at Target.

Now, she’s this horned succubus beast who traded her My Little Ponies for mini skirts and dollar store lip gloss. She latched onto the first boy she saw often enough in the general area. Ian.

Ian…

Mickey battled another wave of rage and nausea that formed together like some sort of tumor. If he died before he lost his virginity and could see PG-13 movies in theaters he’d possess one of Mandy’s dolls in the afterlife and terrorize her for years.

He had to admit though, Ian had some pretty freaky voodoo spellbinding pull over his sister. She had softened like a soggy cookie under his gaze. She was still reluctant to apologize but guilty enough that Mickey could read it on her face. “It’s only four feet deep,” she grumbled.

Mickey frowned.

“Well, the pool’s sorta slippery anyway, it doesn’t matter how shallow it is.” Ian took his hand off Mickey’s back and Mickey hadn’t noticed until then how cold he felt.

“Yeah, babies drown in mop buckets and toilets all the time. You could have murdered wittle Mick,” Lip ribbed. “Poor kid can’t swim.”

Mickey bit his cheek. “Shut your mouth, Gallagher, before I fuck it with my Ruger and empty the clip.”

“Your _daddy’s_ Ruger that you need and two hands and the support of your knee to shoot, man. You want real white on white crime you gotta be strong enough to hold your weapon up.” Lip smirked and slicked his curls back. He spit out a stream of water like a bullfrog.

Mickey dropped his head between his shoulders and coughed hard and ugly. He was too tired to really care about some black-lagoon amphibian had to say about him. Mickey couldn’t swim, the secret had been out for a couple of summers. He’d get teased about it all the time, mostly from his brothers. It embarrassed him to no end, but, Lip was not a threat. He liked to provoke, push people’s buttons until they blew up and he could laugh his way out of the scene he caused. As much as he’d love to wring his stumpy neck, his hands were trembling between his thighs. He felt as strong as a pine needle holding up a rock. He wasn’t up for playing his game. Plus, it felt much better hearing Ian defend Mickey instead of choking him blue.

The hair on his skin stood tall and his shoulders throbbed with warmth when Ian mouthed off on his behalf. Lip backed off, eventually.

Mandy cut through the tension with a lame, genuinely irritated apology. “Sorry, Mick. I forgot. I’ll only kick you ass on land from now on.”

Mickey snorted and reached out to grind her nipple between his thumb and index. She gasped and gripped his wrist, twisting his skin so that it left red finger marks. “Fuckhead!” she wrenched his arm away. She took advantage of Mickey’s position sitting up off the rung and pulled his swim trunks below his knees.

“Mickey’s gotta tiny wiener! Mickey’s gotta tiny wiener!” she sang through the vacant lot and threw her head back to giggle shrill and victorious at the passing clouds.

Mickey blanched and yanked his shorts so far up his balls choked on the mesh lining. He heard two boy’s laughter mix with Mandy’s, and the pool was then hysteric. Mickey panicked and snapped his eyes in Ian’s direction. Ian was sporting a full-on crooked, open-mouth, dorky cheeser like Mickey dreaded. He was giggling with eyes shut tight and shoulder raised to his ears.

“Why was it all weird shaped?! It looked like a worm!” Mandy pointed out in the midst of her fit.

“He’s not circumcised,” Lip chuckled. Mickey felt intense embarrassment rise to the tip of his red ears. He spluttered and then his mouth gave up on trying to string syllables together. Why him? Why him?!

Ian had stopped laughing but he was smiling big and stupid. He had seen his junk plenty of times before, they washed up together when the water heater was on the fritz and only worked for a few minutes an hour. They changed every morning without being mindful of the other’s presence. He still felt fucking terrible though, what if Ian thought it was gross? Was he just being nice because he didn’t want to add to Mickey’s humiliation? Ian’s was cut and normal, like any other boy’s he’d seen in the locker rooms at school.

He’d seen plenty of pornos. All those guys fucked chicks with their veiny snipped dicks, all shiny with their heads visible and blood red, pointing at the sky like the tip of a rocket or an angry alien’s bulging head.

In those magazines at Joe’s Liquor. The issues stuck between _Hustler_ and _SCREW_ with the plastic sleeve ripped off of it. Men bending over for each other in harsh studio lights wearing small embarrassing costumes. Their dicks all flushed and oiled up against their rock hard abs that Mickey eyed from inside his coat like he had seconds to memorize a finished puzzle before he had to make sense of it when it disappeared. Their dicks looked normal. They looked… normal, and good.

Mickey rubbed his hands roughly over his face and pulled his cheeks with his vise-like fingers. He wanted to tear his skin off from under his eyes. Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

“Fuck,” Mickey groaned. Ian thought his body was nasty, for sure.

Why would Mickey care what Ian thought, anyway?

No, he shouldn't ask himself questions like that. It lead to dangerous thoughts.

He had asked himself before in pockets of time he had to himself. At night before bed or in the morning before anyone had woken up. At school during reading time or in the library forcing himself to look at girls shoving their faces between each other’s legs. At home when he was completely alone and had yet to turn a light on in the house as the sun dipped behind the horizon, and when he roamed allies by himself without telling anyone where he was going or when he’d be back.

He separated himself from the outside world and had these small moments where he’d become consumed by overwhelming thoughts, like dying if his dad kicked his rib into his lung, or his mom OD’ing in her apartment in Milwaukee, or Ian’s lips… how his lips felt that night. Soft and slight, a tender slowness that burnt into his mouth like a brand that tasted like his Sour Patch Kids.

“Mickey?” Ian pulled him out of the dark space he tottered into when he wasn’t being careful.

He peaked between his fingers. “Fuck you want?” he mumbled.

Lip was out of the pool, flipping hotdogs for Fiona. Mandy was hanging over the edge, talking to Debbie who was on the deck messing with the stereo. Sometimes Mickey forgot they all had short attention spans and got over things in a span of thirty seconds.

“You okay?” Ian asked. He couldn’t reach him well enough with Mickey sat high and humiliated like the class dunce, so he wrapped an arm around Mickey’s calves and pressed his chest on his shins.

Mickey thought: _I could knee this fucker right between these eyes if I wanted to_ , but in the same wave: _I could also rest my hand on his head, wrap it around the back of his neck, feel calmer quicker because I’m touching Ian, which I do little of lately. He’s solid and tangible, anchoring me like a hand wrapped around the string of a balloon. Touching him makes me feel nice. Why deny it? Why avoid it?_

He pet Ian’s wet red ringlets, his hand still shaking and refusing to grab his roots. He could only glide his fingers through to the base of his skull. No was watching them. Mickey took advantage and squeezed Ian’s shoulder. Ian, knowing Mickey’s boundaries, pressed his head to Mickey’s knee and then floated backward, out of Mickey’s palm, far enough that Mickey couldn’t even touch him with toe if he outstretched his leg. He almost made an uncontrollable, panicked, whine

_No, not yet, please! Climb up here and hug me first. Just this once. No one’s watching, I checked. Double checked! Pinch me, poke me, slug me. Hit hard like you used to, Gallagher. It’s been months. Give me something more. Anything! I won’t kiss you again. If that’s what the problem is, I promise not to kiss you-_

Promise you won’t kiss him again? What, were you planning on it before, fag?

_-I’m not one of those. If I could explain to you how sorry I am, can we touch again? There you were, hugging my legs, so why can’t you ignore everything else, too. If you got this far why can’t you just tell me to go fuck myself and say you miss how it used to be? Do you miss it? I won’t kiss you ever again. I’m not that. I’m not them. Do you think I am? I promise I won’t do anything to make it seem like…_

but he swallowed it, and the whining pleads were razor blades against his throat. “Yes. I’m okay.”

“They’re just shiteaters.” Ian smiled weakly, shaken and a little cloud-brained, too, but probably not like Mickey was. “Besides,” he tacked on, “Carl’s not sliced up either, it’s not like we don’t know what it looks like or anything.”

“Wow… thanks.”

Ian managed to laugh. “I noticed before. Just in… passing, but like, no. I never thought it was weird,” he insisted, sounding a little constipated.

Mickey grimaced and wrapped his arms around himself again to stave off the shakes. He looked over at Fiona coming through the door and flip-flopping down the stairs toward the grill.

Great, Ian was getting eyefuls of his hooded assassin and Mickey didn’t shy away from flapping it around. He was traumatizing Ian this entire time.“Stop… talking about it,” he begged when he heard Ian take a breath to say more.

“Okay,” Ian sighed.

Mickey kicked some water at his face to lighten the mood a little. Ian laughed genuinely because he was bad at fully realizing the tension in a moment. The guy would probably chuckle at a funeral if you made a good enough jab at the deceased.

Mickey could not help but let himself think in the time it took Ian’s smile to fade that he felt the best about himself when he was making Ian happy. Nothing could quite compare.

He hated himself for making it so hard to do that since Halloween. On the surface, they were as happy as ever, Mickey especially, because he was with him and not taking field trips to see some foreigners holding uzis in front of a warehouse. But there was this underlying feeling in everything they did. This heavy push and pull, like the little waves in the pool Mickey was pushing his feet into.

It was water weight, black swamp-water weight. Mickey didn’t know if Ian realized, but they were sinking centimeter by centimeter, and temporary happiness that came out when Mickey tried too hard to overcompensate for what he did months ago, acted like a flimsy flotation device.

 -

Debbie replayed the High School Musical soundtrack three times in a row. She had a dance for every single song that all looked similar, but she performed each with intense vigor. Mickey figured out she recycled the same seven moves in a different order each time a new track came on, but he had to admit, she put a lot of heart and soul into her routines. Fiona encouraged her by dancing along and cheering as she flipped burger patties. She also joined in on the duets, which was most of the album.

Carl threw his LeapPad at her and her smacked her right in the knee. He got sent inside six songs ago to take his midday nap. Lip, Mandy, and Ian were playing volleyball, acting as three one-manned teams because two-on-two was off the table when Mickey refused to come back in until he was good and ready. He sat on the highest rung of the ladder bound in a starfish towel for an hour. He decided to dip in and stand against the side like he was before Mandy decided to play titanic using Mickey as the floating door.

Yeah, it was only four feet deep, but Mickey was five feet tall. The water came to the top of his shoulders. One slip and his feet would be off the ground and his head would go under. He never learned how to float and if he was panicking it was hard to get his feet steady. He’d flail and choke until he tired, and then he’d probably just sink. So even pools like these were risky for him, but he didn’t want to be a baby about it.

What was it about a mass of water that terrified him so much? Some of his fears stemmed from his general anxiety. He could shoot a gun and transport drugs and knock a kid’s teeth out, because that was, and the pun was stupid considering the circumstances, sink or swim. Hit or be hit. Do as your father says… or be hit, he thought and laughed to himself. His dad was a big schoolyard bully at the core. Mickey just really didn’t want to get hit, by anyone.

The small things he had time to think about, he overanalyzed. Swimming was a big one.

Mickey had one or two dreams about the ocean, and he’d never been. He’d seen a lot of it on television, and it couldn’t be all that different from a three hundred mile Lake Michigan, not when it seemed to stretch vast and endless like an ocean and you couldn’t see a lick of land searching the horizon.

Mickey was younger in these dreams, but only by few years, maybe he’d been ten. If he appeared in his own dreams he was never his actual age, always smaller.

He had been the only one on a long stretch of a gray-sand beach, between two colossal craggy boulders that seemed miles from him in either direction, like black canine teeth as he stood in the large mouth of a beast, or maybe the water had been the inside of the mouth, and he was peering into it.

He was dressed in a hole-littered shirt and his least favorite ugly corduroy pants that has bloodstains on the back pockets from when he pulled them back up after getting the belt. That might have meant something, or maybe it didn't. He wore those all the time and they manifested in his dreams like the ghost of reality.

He would chew on his long sleeve and watch the peak of silver waves collapse on themselves and crash. They’d flatten and spread out along the even water like angry fingers reaching for him, like angry tongues licking. Closer and closer these waves crashed, these tendrils grasped, searching for him. They’d soon swallow him.

He could not move.

The sky was a gapless milky dome that seemed to produce the enormous tidal wave rolling toward him. It poured from the sky itself and grew, larger and larger, a boundless wall of moving gray. A raging, hungry tsunami. The evil coming from the belly of whoever's mouth he was trembling before.

He could not move.

Before it buried him, his eyes rolled into the back of his skull and he fainted onto the sand.

He usually woke up from those dreams with piss-soaked sheets.

 

Mickey had never tried to swim, but he entertained himself and Ian when he sulked on the side. Ian looked at him all cheerful like total square.

Debbie left her post as the evening’s entertainer to go put on more sunscreen at Fiona’s request, and Lip spiked the ball that he tossed in the air and nearly pelted Ian before he jumped out of the water. “Eject the disk, quick!”

Fiona, with her mouth stuffed full of a cheeseburger, rolled her eyes from her spot on the porch steps and ignored him.

“Whose side are you on, Fi?” Lip cried. “My brain is melting out of my ears. Fucking Christ, I can’t take it anymore.”

“She was having fun. Don’t be a spaz.” She flicked a pickle slice at him.

Lip reached the player and ejected it himself, the cheerful auto-tuned voices belting about school spirit cut off and, much to Mickey’s dismay, 50 Cent’s _Get Rich or Die Tryin’_ was inserted. It played on full volume so that the tinny noise reached the neighbor’s backyards.

“Jesus Christ,” Mickey griped when “In Da Club” came on, unabashed and unwelcomed in the backyard of a very white family. Rap music bumping at the Gallaghers was the equivalent of having your uncircumcised wiener dangle in front of a small audience, like a grandma picking you up from school in cutoff jeans and a bikini top, like eating too many baked beans at the end of school festival and throwing up in Margaret Shelley’s hair—all of which have happened to him—absolutely _horrific_.

Lip bobbed his head and did a weird arm movement like he was a DJ trying to get the crowd hyped. Fiona became extremely excited, as she often did when songs she dubbed as “her’s” came on and she made gun shapes with her fingers, index and middle stuck out and her thumbs up, and moved to the rhythm of the methodic beats.

If Mickey was comfortable sinking down he would hide his sullen face and muffle the sound. He’d have to suffer and watch as Mandy spasmed like an inflatable tube man, yelling out the easy chorus. He’d only ever seen his sister break from her cool exterior when she was pissed, or when she was around Ian recently. Apparently, 50 cent was enough to get her to have fun, too. She’d experienced it all today. She’d probably conk out as soon as they went inside, tired from all the energy she’d exerted. Mickey knew the feeling, having a good day and not just… a good hour, or a good ten minutes, was tiring. It took the piss out of the two of them. He couldn’t imagine what going on a day trip to an amusement park or some shit would feel like.

Ian, who had trouble reading tense situations, also was a total retard when understanding when Mickey wanted to be left out of his family’s shenanigans. Their family lives were very similar but in the same breath, drastically different.

Mickey’s family didn’t know how to be goofy. This natural warm glow that was shared amidst the Gallaghers was not strong enough in Mickey’s own home.

They’d all grow cold and sick, like in the winter when their busted heater forced them all to share clothes so they could layer them and prevent a flu virus. That was a good metaphor for their home in general. Frigid, damp, sick.

They tried to create warmth between them by lending each other apart of them to stay connected. It was hard, especially when things got so bad none of them saw the point in keeping an unbreakable bond.

Sometimes it felt like a home of dying kids, cancer patients, or something. No one was coming in and hugging each other when they heard one another cry, struggle with their homework, or seem like they needed someone to talk to. The discontent would never end, anyway.

It wasn’t always like that. There were good days. Sometimes Mickey was just thrilled it was warm outside and that school wasn’t going terrible, and his brothers were being dumb pricks but it was comforting, and Mandy smiled more.

Nothing could compare to how it felt to be at Ian’s.

It was obviously better here, and he was worlds happier, but, sometimes it made him a little sad when he came over. It felt like they were communicating telepathically because they were so in tune with each other. Mickey couldn’t read them. He couldn’t read why they were smiling at nothing in the kitchen some mornings. He couldn’t read intimate bonds that showed themselves when they shared looks or sat quietly. He couldn’t read unconditional displays of love. He was a visiting outsider after all.

Ian tried to make sure he didn’t feel that way. Ian was so good. Mickey would rocket launch the shit out of anyone who pointed it out but, Ian was unlike anyone he had ever met and, if he didn’t have him he wouldn’t have anything but small fragments of a good life he could only daydream about in those pockets of time he was alone, concentrating too hard for an innocuous, twelve-year-old boy.

He glanced at Ian because he was the only Gallagher he could read enough to understand why the hell everyone thought it was cool to put Mickey into a cringe-induced coma.

Sadly, he was rapping the words too, out loud and _at him_. Holy fucking shit. Mickey was going to die.

Ian shimmied his small bony chest through the water at him like an albino sea creature. “Do not come near me,” Mickey threatened.

He performed increasingly more dorky moves at him and Mickey’s eyebrows shot up off his forehead as a defense mechanism. “Ian… “

Ian did the most foolish gangster pout anyone had ever seen and pantomimed a spanking motion. Mickey rarely cried but he felt the backs of his eyes sting, warning him of an oncoming sobbing fit.

He shook his head when Ian gestured that he join in on the chorus. “C’mon Mick, you know the words!”

Of course he knew the words! But Jesus, rap it once when you’re high laying on your friend's floor with your chest covered in captain crunch and you were obligated to join in whenever it played for the rest of your life. Your. Life!

“Okay, you need to push the fuck back, nutjob.” He held his hands out in front of him when Ian floated closer with his freakishly large mouth stretched like taffy and stapled to either side of his face. “Stop!” he pleaded.

Ian wrestled his way past Mickey’s arms and Mickey yelped. Ian pulled Mickey’s back against his chest and took his forearms in his hands after some slippery grappling. He began controlling him like a puppet and made his body sway to the beat.

“C’mon Mickey!” Fiona cheered with her hands coming together over her head.

Mandy spun in the pool and giggled wildly when she saw Mickey’s limp body being manipulated by a redheaded puppeteer. “Take the stick out of your asshole, douchbag,” she encouraged much less eloquently.

“Have some fun, man,” Lip called.

Debbie, who had returned at some point covered in a waxy white sheen of sunblock, was disappointed but not surprised to find her preteen bops had been replaced with gangster rap, waved her arms in the air from her spot on the porch and cheered too.

Ian made Mickey pump his arms like a crowd member at a dance club. Neither of them noticed until later when they separated and their skin was hot that they had touched again. They touched and it was so natural Mickey had forgotten to pretend to be upset. All he paid attention to now was that it felt really good. It felt right.

_(If you touch me more, I promise not to kiss you.)_

“C’mon,” Ian laughed in his ear. It was a genuine request now, a real whispered invitation. “C’mon.”

So Mickey gave in.

He smiled and rolled his eyes. He sheepishly rapped along, word for word. Ian was still in full control of him like he was directing a corpse. All he could do was blush and laugh.

Everyone clapped and roared as Mickey flawlessly executed the last verse and chorus without any gusto whatsoever.

 -

“I could teach you how to float,” Ian broke the silence.

The sun was getting closer to vanishing behind the houses across the street, leaving them in a dusty blue glow, but for now, a strip of brilliant yellow cast down on them through a cloud. It was five o’clock and everyone had left the pool to play tackle football in the backyard, just out of sight.

Mickey stayed. Ian stayed.

Mickey sat atop the ladder again, sharpening a stick he found in the pool into a point with his fingernail. Maybe he’d use it on Lip later. “Go fuck yourself,” he sighed.

Ian crouched in the center of the water with his head tipped back. They were feet apart. Even though Mickey was higher, slouched on the rung with his elbow up on a handle like a lax king glancing down past his shiv, he felt powerless against Ian.

“It’s just you and me here,” Ian pointed out. “I wouldn’t let you drown.”

“No.”

Ian grabbed his knees and looked away, bummed out. He spun in a small slow circle, and Mickey went back to sharpening. “Just thought I could… because I don’t want you to be scared when we swim. And I don’t want you to sit out and feel bad anymore,” he thought aloud, no longer making eye contact. Mickey sharpened with more vigor. “The pool is bad for swimming lessons but, floating… I could… you can learn to float on your back.”

“Don’t need lessons of any kind, Red,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, but I just thought I could at least show you,” Ian pressed on. “I won’t act like an annoying teacher. It’s not too hard. I’d just show you. I won’t make fun of you.”

Mickey was powerless to Ian.

“No.”

“Well, okay.”

Oh so powerless.

He peeked at him and dropped his spike to his thigh, his face softening minutely. Ian was staring unbothered at the loose branches in the trees, brushing the small windchimes Mickey could not remember being there before. They tinkled in the light breeze. “It’s just that it makes me anxious, and I’m too tired to get all worked up or whatever, sorry,” he muttered.

Ian didn’t nod like a secretly offended mother when you told her you had plans with friends. He just gave him a comforting look because he was sincerely okay with it. “Don’t be.” Then he grinned and snatched Mickey’s spike from his hand to examine it. Mickey didn’t protest. He watched him, head foggy.

Powerless.

“What would I do be doing?” Mickey heard himself ask.

“Huh?” Ian stirred the water with the wood.

“If you taught me how to float.”

Ian didn’t look at him. He watched the mini whirlpool he created and smiled smugly. The little shit.

 -

“Don’t forget that floaties are an option,” Ian reminded Mickey, who stood in the middle of the pool with him, uncomfortable without the support of the tarp pool wall but so far, feeling alright.

“Eat me,” Mickey snapped.

Ian clicked his molars together and smirked.

Mickey had considered asking to borrow Debbie’s floaties, sure, briefly after Ian held his wrist and walked him towards the sagging lumpy middle of the plastic floor. He decided against it.

Other than noting that Ian had that same pull over him as he did Mandy (fuck knows why. The guy’s a dweeb and a half. He couldn’t even lure a stray dog in the house if hands were steaks), he also wanted to do this because Ian made a great point: it sucked sitting out and feeling shitty because he couldn’t perform a simple, fun task. It’d be like walking with your group of friends who all rode circles around you on their bikes because you couldn’t balance on one for shit without kiddie wheels.

It had become one more thing he hated about his parents and how he was raised: they didn’t have time to teach them “frivolous shit.” They got the hang of riding bikes on their own. Mickey learned how to whistle because their cable had gone out and no one was up for playing cards. Mandy still had not learned. She blew crude raspberries in the rhythm of Yankee Doodle. They taught themselves to snap their fingers, surf the web, articulate themselves through swears, color inside the lines.

Mandy was not a wonderful swimmer but she got the hang of it. She spent a lot of time at the public pool the last couple of (fatherless) summers when Mickey stayed inside and lit various things on fire and smoked pot. In that time, his younger sister had surpassed him in something. It killed him every day to know he was nearing thirteen and he’d rather hang out in a wading kitty pool or even better, kick it in the bathtub with his favorite scrubby bath mitt monster—Mr. Sass-quatch.

Mickey squeezed his eyes shut. “Kay Gallagher, what first?”

“You watch me, just to get the idea.” He let go of his wrist. Mickey’s eyes flew open and he instinctively snatched Ian’s arm before it pulled away.

“Shit. Wait,” he pleaded.

Ian furrowed his non-existent eyebrows. “What?”

“I—what if I slip.”

“Then I’ll stop to catch you.” Ian offered an easy smile. “I’m not moving far. Maybe a couple inches away so I have room.”

Mickey blinked stupidly. “Oh.”

Ian lifted his feet up and tipped himself backward. His legs floated like some vampirical levitation and he bobbed at the surface of the water. The highest points of his body were not submerged. His face came into view soon after when he lifted his head. He exhaled and spit some water out of his mouth. “And then you just relax your muscles. The water does the rest,” Ian promised. He opened his eyes and squinted at Mickey.

Oh yeah, sure. He made it look so _easy_. “The water does the rest, huh?” Mickey folded his arms.

“Right.”

He gave him a look. “My problem is that I _sink_. I relax my muscles and I’m a sack of cement, man.”

Ian stood on two feet again and shook some water out of his ear. He thought for a moment. “Have you ever tried to float on your back?”

“Hell no.”

“I bet if you really relaxed and didn’t panic you wouldn’t sink, then. You ever been relaxed in water?”

“Only when I’m beating it in the shower,” Mickey smiled with his tongue between his teeth. Ian threw him a death glare.

“I’ll take that as a no, then. So that’s what we have to work on,” he concluded with a shrug.

“What if I’m just a sinker? What if I can’t float?”

Ian floated on his back again, outstretched on the water like a cat on a blanket. “Everyone floats. Humans are naturally, you know, inflatable.” He waved his hand.

Neither of them knew the word “buoyant” yet, so they both accepted the phrasing and moved on.

It took a good five minutes, but Ian convinced Mickey to put an arm around Ian’s shoulder so that when Mickey was ready, Ian could lift him bridal style and tip him back as if he were baptizing him. Totally not lame.

This time, Mickey was _very_ aware that they were touching. The smell of hose water mixing with Ian’s natural scent on his skin made him reek like a big rain cloud. Mickey wasn’t totally opposed to taking whiffs in their close proximity.

“Ready?”

“Fuck no!”

They waited another twenty minutes just standing there with their arms around each other like the only two idiots in a group huddle. Ian tried to be encouraging and Mickey almost bit his head off. Then, Mickey warned, “If you move your hands out from under me I will rip your nuts off and play hacky sack with them while you watch.” He worried his lip between his teeth.

He tended to curve his nerves by being extremely mean and using tons of hand gestures, but it wasn’t like Ian was unfamiliar with this coping mechanism. He already hit Ian three times just from exclaiming with his hand.

“I know,” Ian indulged him. “This is practice. Not going to move my hands unless you say.”

“I _won’t_ say! If you think that’s gonna happen you got another thing coming, tampon top.”

“Okay, okay,” he soothed.

Mickey finally relaxed his forehead crease. “Then… I think I’m ready.”

“You said that ten times.”

“I’m fucking ready.”

Without further contemplation, Ian lifted Mickey slowly, his other arm now hooked in the crook of his knees. Mickey clung to him like a kitten. “Ohhh,” he whined and held his breath.

If all the people Mickey pulled the wool over on and intimidated in the neighborhood could see him now. Mikhailo Milkovich, trembling inside of a small pool with his butt shying away from the surface and Ian cooing at him like he really was a baby getting baptized.

Christ.

“I won’t let go.”

_I won’t let go, Jack._

“Ugh, Christ!” Mickey lamented.

Ian immersed him and released some of his weight when the water took over and held him. He kept one arm under his back and the other right beneath his ass. Mickey blushed when his forearm pressed into his buttcheeks but neither of them shifted to correct the problem. “Shit. I’m gonna die,” he diagnosed.

“That’s quitter talk.”

“You’re not holding me!”

“I am!”

“Hold me tighter!”

Ian rolled his eyes and pressed into him so that their bodies were squashed. If Mickey wasn’t so petrified and his stomach wasn’t in his ass, he’d definitely be tingling right now. “Now relax. I have you. Let go of my shoulders.”

“God you _want_ me to die, don’t you?!”

“Yeah,” he admitted and squinted to avoid water getting his eyes when Mickey flailed. “I’ll hold you. I’m holding you! Let go.”

Mickey made an odd desperate cry and released him like he was dropping a toy in a hissy fit. He laid stiff as a board with his hands in fists at his sides.

“Doing good.”

“Shut up.”

“Really, Mickey.”

“Don’t talk to me.”

He knew he looked ridiculous. He was as white as a fish and laying in an exemplary luging position. His body tight and locked. His head was raised out of the water like a turtle peeping from its shell and lips were pressed in a hard line. He looked deep in concentration, or like he was attempting to pass stubborn gas. Ian had the courtesy not to laugh but somehow Mickey knew he was suppressing smiles even with his eyes screwed shut.

“Try to relax,” Ian directed. Mickey didn’t know how he ever would. His muscles were so strained, heart beating so hard it jolted his entire body. He twitched and the water lapped around his toes.

This wasn’t the ocean. There was no massive wave lumbering toward him, so why did he see one behind his eyelids? Except, this one had eyes of its own. Deep vertical crevices that looked like a snake’s pupils as it rushed toward him, ravenous. This time it would reach him. It wouldn’t be a dream that he awoke from before the impact. This wave would throw him, shove its way into his nose and throat. Strangle him. Crush him. Bury him.

“I can’t Ian, I really can’t.” Mickey let go of all his inhibitions. He was okay with being a weenie. It was just Ian. Ian had seen him plenty scared. He was scared now and he was tired of trying to hide it. He did that sort of shit all the time and it was exhausting.

“Okay,” Ian accepted. Mickey peeled an eye open to look at him. He looked wide-eyed and worried, like a big kind savior bug. Damn, why were his eyes so fucking big. “We don’t have to then.” He was ready to put him back on his feet when Mickey groaned, frustrated.

“No,” he sighed. He was scared but he wasn’t finished. He hadn’t reached his goal. He wanted to float. By fuck, he would fucking do it, dammit. Did he humiliate himself all the way into this position just to stop? If he stopped now he’d probably never try again. At Ian’s surprised expression, Mickey continued. “Just tell me how to do it.”

Ian flashed his stubby teeth. “Oh! Yeah. I’ll help you, Mick. You really wanna still?”

“Yes. Hurry before I change my fucking mind.” Ian’s smile didn’t fade. He positioned his hands, digging his pruney fingers gently into Mickey’s side, then he checked to make sure Mickey was level and wouldn’t tip.

“Um, okay,” he began. “How to relax. Well, when I try to calm down before a test or when falling asleep, I think of a happy memory.”

Well, at least he didn’t start singing lullabies at him. “A happy memory?” he clarified. He had plenty to choose from, he supposed. His life wasn’t _all_ just a series of _Law and Order_ reruns. There were good things about it too. That’s what kept Mickey chugging along.

He thought of a few easy ones right off that bat. Just yesterday watching horror flicks with Ian. He was a little on edge, but it was fun. They ate loads of popcorn and Ian was plagued with bad gas all fucking night. He thought of last month, trading a skateboard he found by the dumpster for some weed that in turn, he traded with some other chump for a used PSP that came with _Thrillville_. What a moron. That day had been great, he suckered some bitch like it was second nature.

Rather than choosing from recent go-to memories, he knew he would have to dig deeper. Right now he was still quivering and very rigid, still seeing snake eyes in waves when his mind strayed. He had few undiluted blissful memories. He could not immediately recall the last time he had not had a prick of apprehension or stress in his body, even when he was with Ian, which was when he was happiest, there was the prick. The prick and the weight. That stabbing and heavy push. Two separate things. A knifepoint and water. Stabbing and drowning. The prick was worry, the push was sadness. He wouldn’t understand that for years, but at that moment he was aware of the sensations.

He’d have to go further back before he met Ian or started hustling. When joy was easier to have and keep. When there was very little worry and so much time.

It came to him like a knock on the door. He swung it open and peered through.

He was six. He was sitting at a large light wood table. He could not remember whose house it was but it wasn’t his own. Maybe it had been an aunt’s. His maternal aunt was kind, patient, and worried, like a mother to his mother. She had been younger than his mom but he remembered her behaving like she was ten years her senior. She was a lovely woman that Mickey liked to picture as a kind-hearted witch with all the special teas and soups she made. She dealt with Mickey’s injuries naturally. Weird lotions and elixirs were rubbed into his cuts and blotted with a cotton ball. She spoke Ukrainian fluently and taught him how to say “I’m hungry” since that was the most important phrase to him at the time. He hardly knew her but he liked her very much.

She wasn’t there but he assumed he was sitting in her home. His hair was buzzed and his cropped bangs were gelled up in the coolest little flip. He was writing with a red jumbo pencil clutched in his small fist. Big sloppy scrawl covered half of his wide-ruled paper.

“Write me a story, baby,” his mom said before she disappeared into the kitchen, so he was. He was great at making up stories. He couldn’t remember what this one was about but there was a melting candy bar with a sad face drawn with crayons in the corner. He really did have food on the brain at all times.

Iggy was playing _Metal Gear Solid_ on the modest static TV. Mandy was in the corner of the house inside the billowing curtains catching crickets on the window sill. He smelt spaghetti bolognese wafting into his nostrils, trailing from the old-fashioned stove his mom was working over. She had some old eighties song playing on a small shortwave radio hung up on a nail by the window above the sink.

_But I’m trapped by your love / I’m chained to your side._

Mickey wrote furiously until his hand swelled. It was cool out on a day tipping towards autumn. The breeze through the screen door touched him like a loving hand rubbing the fuzz on the nape of his neck. It rolled up the sleeves of his old blue sweater. He was swathed in the breeze that had passed through tall dead trees. The signal of change in the year. A change more than the smell but in his entire body chemistry. He paused and closed his eyes when the wind came and cupped his cheeks.

He remembered showing his mom his story immediately after his pencil cracked down on the table. Her hair was clipped in a big curly mess on the back of her head and her sun-worn arms wrapped around him tightly, smearing some tomato sauce from her fingers on his hood. She read it all while Mickey chewed his thumb and squirmed anxiously against the beads of her sea glass bracelets.

His mother pressed her forehead against his and brushed her long lashes on his eyebrow. Her eyes were close and blurry, the same shade as his, as big as moons. Mickey closed his own eyes and nuzzled into the stay frizzy hairs on her hairline. “You are so creative, my son,” she whispered. “So talented. You hold onto that, do you understand? You keep your imagination as big and endless as you can, for as long as you can. You don’t ever let that die out. Don’t _ever_ let that piece of you die out, huh?” Mickey nodded and squeezed his eyes tighter. “My smart boy. See life and beauty in the smallest things. Know no boundaries.”

She pecked his lips and held his face inches from hers, rubbing his ears with the pads of her thumbs. Her smile was the sun beaming through the blinds and casting a halo around her dark hair that turned a sweet red in the light.

Mickey was in the pool again, completely at ease, floating on his back with his arms out and above his head, his legs stretched in an upside down V, his chest open and the blond hairs on his body standing skyward above the pimpled flesh. He swayed like driftwood as similar beams of sunlight from his memory struck the pool in bold vermillion. His lips were touched by the ghost of a smile.

Ian was standing inches away with his own arms at his side, a goofy triumphant grin slapped on his face. He flipped on his back, floating with his body pointed in the opposite direction from Mickey. Their heads were right beside one another.

Mickey opened his eyes and his mouth made formed a rotated, toothy capital D shape that pressed his pink cheeks into his eyes. His brows flew to high heaven when he turned his head to look at Ian drifting inches away. “Hey! I’m doing it!” he rejoiced. “Ian!”

“I know!” Ian giggled. “Stay relaxed. That’s the key.”

“Oh shit!” Mickey laughed loud and reckless. He was floating! The water held him up and he was basking in it, moving slowly around the area of the pool. He didn’t even have to try. The act was as effortless as Ian had made it look. He was sprawling out like he would stretch on a blanket on a living room floor. Mickey was weightless. If he had no weight, he could close his eyes and pretend he wasn’t a real person, only needing to be conscious of his breathing. He could disappear. The tidal waves couldn’t reach him. “I did it,” he breathed, absorbing it all in a powerful rush.

Ian dipped under water and swam beneath Mickey. Mickey, blinded by his ambition and an overwhelming sense of confidence, rolled his body over so he was face down. He locked up for a moment, almost slipping from the weightless ease and stumbling below the surface. His limbs flailed and he dug at the water with his feet and hands in a frenzy.

Fuck, maybe he wasn’t fucking ready to be on his belly yet.

He could see Ian laying on the blue tarp floor, looking up at him through his cloud of curls that looked brown in the murky water. He reached his hands up and steadied Mickey by his biceps and made a “relax” meditation-like gesture and then smiled, not worried in the slightest that Mickey would turn into a cold-skinned floater. Bubbles escaped the corner of Ian’s lips and nostrils and popped in Mickey’s face. Mickey released the tension in his body that was like a tightly strung piano wire and let go.

Ian swam up and around him, slithering his body like a creature from the deep and making fishy faces at him. Then he just drifted there beneath him for a couple, intense moments. Smiling, inches away from his face and examining him with the softest eyes, green and vivid, gleaming from the red busts dancing at the top of the water, like flecks of fire. The boys moved in slow motion, blinking and tilting their heads, peering at each other in the heavy quiet, like Ian was half fish, Mickey was human, and they were intertwining their two worlds for the very first time in history, communicating in a frenzy of bubbles and slow-moving, curious fingertips. Ian was beautiful.

 -

They laid out on the grass near the chain link fence in the vacant lot a couple feet apart. They were on their sides facing the neighboring home, Mickey with his back to Ian, a red and white striped towel laid haphazardly over his side, shoved under his armpit. His back was bowed, one arm stretched behind him and his legs slightly folded back toward his behind. Ian’s head was near Mickey’s hand, he was curled in on himself aside from one leg extended in front of him.

Neither of the boys knew it, but their bodies were making two halves of a lopsided heart.

They rested quietly and dripped, opening and closing their eyes.

 -

“I’m sorry for spazzing earlier. I don’t have a good reason to be afraid of swimming, I just freak out,” Mickey said, still reaching all corners of the grass lot from his spot under his towel.

He heard Ian from behind him. “A good reason doesn’t mean no reason. Is there one?” he wondered. His words were muffled like his mouth was smushed on his arm. He sounded drowsy.

Should he tell him? He’d sound like a fucking depressed lunatic. He wasn’t depressed or anything, at least he didn’t think so with what he knew about depression, but his dreams were fucked all the way up. At most, he was disturbed. “I just have these dreams where I’m on the beach and a tsunami’s comin’. I think about drowning a lot, too. Just one of my dumb fears or whatever. Pretty freak huh?” he explained casually.

After a beat of silence, Ian answered. “No. I don’t think it’s freaky. I have dreams like that.”

“You do?” He heard Ian sit up and scoot closer to him. Mickey didn’t move, he continued to blur and focus his eyes against the fence, watching a little red Tikes car with the yellow roof sit in a pile of weeds. Ian was plucking grass and placing the blades parallel to each other down Mickey’s arm that was resting behind him, growing numb from being in an odd position.

“Not about water. I have dreams where people die, usually one of my family members and I can’t save them. That’s weirder than your's, I think.” He tickled the crook of his elbow with grass and Mickey squirmed. “Hey! Don’t mess up my art.”

“Your face is messed up art.”

“Sounds like a compliment to me. Some messed up art is great,” he insisted.

“Wasn’t one,” Mickey smiled.

Ian covered his whole arm down to his wrist and started placing them on his exposed ribs on to his hip where the towel wasn’t draped.

“You ever dream about me?” Mickey asked dazedly when Ian was finished and worked on his thigh.

“Yes,” Ian answered without thought. “Thought you couldn’t get any more annoying but you are when I’m unconscious.”

Mickey giggled breathlessly and then twitched away when he was tickled again. “Stop!” and then, “What am I doing in your dreams?”

“Y—”

“Dying?”

Ian pinched him. “No, sadly. You’re just being you but worse. Louder and stupider.”

“You’re stupider,” he slurred, drunk with fatigue. He was pleased as punch that Ian dreamt about him. He hid a blush in the grass and thought about burying his nose in the dirt and eventually his whole head. Ian _dreamt_ about him, wow.

Ian reached his calf. “Do you dream about me?”

Boy, did he. Ian was in his dreams more than anyone. Dreaming of him and seeing him the very next day was like wishing for something and finding it in a box on your front doorstep. He never got used to Ian being real, not just some vivid orange blur while he slept that made him so happy his chest hurt when he woke up to his alarm. Then, the orange vanished out the corner of his eyes. “Sure,” he answered.

“What am I doing in your dreams?”

Mickey looked behind his shoulder. Ian was biting his tongue and carefully placing grass down Mickey’s foot. His hair was frizzy spirals of fire, glowing in the last inches of the sun that touched the two boys. His smatter of freckles were the bits of smoldering ember dusting his nose and cheeks, reaching all the way to his nimble fingers. He was soft faced and serious, lashes blinking against sunburnt skin right beneath his eyes. Mickey sprung up and knocked all the grass off of him before shoving him to the ground. “What the hell, Mickey! I was almost done you buttlicker!”

He plopped down beside him and they laid face to face, cheeks on the ground. He smiled. “I might not be dying in your dreams but you are in mine,” he teased. The gnats that made jobs out of swarming tall weeds were now fascinated with Ian. A couple of them bounced off his hair, but Ian didn't notice. “No, we’re just doing normal stuff. Sometimes we say weird things I can’t remember.”

That much was true. None of his dreams that featured Ian were particularly spectacular or odd. They were usually simple, hanging out on the sofa, going to school, walking around town. To Mickey those sort of dreams meant everything. They were vivid and calming, like a lighter alternate universe. They helped him get through the night, and be excited for the next with the high chance that Ian would show up again and again. He guessed his favorite part is that they were unabashedly happy. There wasn’t a hint of looming stress or anxiety that had become the norm in everyday life. They could just be kids. Best of all, Mickey wasn’t afraid to be as close to Ian as he could possibly get. He was courageously stupid and clingy when it came to affection, and that really was a way of being he could only dream of.

Ian didn’t answer him, but they watched each other’s face and hands. They pulled clumps of grass. They sighed together, warming up in the balmy air. They were communicating. It’s the reason why Mickey wasn’t too surprised with what Ian had to say next, after all, they were in each other’s personal space for the first time in a long time. Ian’s pinky kept twitching next to Mickey’s like he wanted to interlock them. He knew it was coming, and he felt very scared, but at least he could pretend like he wasn’t… so long as he didn’t flinch when Ian shifted the mood of the afternoon with: “I know why you always sit far away from me, and why you roll away in my bed, and… also why you keep your knees from knocking into mine under the table. I just think it’s bullshit, Mick.”

Surprise surprise, Mickey did flinch.

He didn’t think he’d confront him about this now, or _ever_ , really. He’d prayed to whoever the fuck might be listening, aliens, most likely, that they’d forget all about how distant they were as friends now and just accept it as the new norm. Did he actually want that? Of course not, but he wished, holy shit he wished and wished.

Having to face the sole reason for Mickey’s decision to be a worse friend than before made him so terrified and riddled with deep guilt it made him physically ill. He had even gotten a cold only days after Halloween night. It wasn’t even winter yet, when his family shared clothes and wore three pairs of socks so their feet on the tile wouldn’t be the onset of a nasty flu. No. It was the beginning of November and Mickey was bedridden with dark, throbbing, gut-punching _guilt_ and terror.

He had no choice but the wean himself off of Ian’s touch, and that was mostly for Ian’s sake. He insisted over and over he would never advance on Ian like that again for as long as he lived, that it was a stupid one time mistake he made because he was pumped full of Tylenol from his jacked up nose. He was high off endorphins from bawling his eyes out. Some small part that he refused to acknowledge knew that if he didn’t separate him and Ian, he might do it again. He’d kiss him and Ian would never speak to him because he betrayed their close bond for some sick perverted impulse. Some disgusting desire. That scared him sick for _weeks_.

He was relieved when Ian never brought up the fact that he’d rather throw insults around than wrestle to settle disputes. He started high-fiving instead of hugging. They never shared clothes. Mickey acted uncomfortable when they had to shower with one another. Then there was the space between them on beds, couches, chairs. The continental drift, playing frame by frame, so slowly you’d miss it until you realized Mickey was halfway to Tokyo and Ian no longer leaned on him during movies, but a little old couch pillow.

There were hurt looks. There were unusual lulls in conversation. Eventually, Ian stopped asking and trying to get into his space. Eventually, when he invited Mickey over, the couch pillow was already sitting between the cushions, ready to act as a barrier.

Now Ian had ripped the band-aid off, now that weird energy that was black water weight was overflowing out onto the mudbanks.

Ian remembered that entire night, and he still thought about it, like Mickey greatly feared.

If he lost Ian as a friend he would lose his fucking mind.

So he told him that.

Ian flipped Mickey on his back and wrapped his arms around him, resting his head in the crook of his neck. He held him tight and Mickey’s bony knees shook like the grass was vibrating, like the earth was gearing up to split in half. He wrapped his arms around him and felt his shoulder blades move beneath his palms. It all felt so right, so good, like coming back to a haven. How did Mickey go months without the bony fucker jabbing into his body in his organ-squeezing embraces? No one hugged him like that, that was for damn sure. It was like he’d forgotten how important he was to someone when Ian stopped hugging him like that. Again, he thought about how he’d never felt better about who he was, with his last name tagged to him like a number on a cow’s ear and all, than when he was making Ian happy to have chosen him as a friend.

“If you think you’d lose me, Mickey, well… I guess _you’re_ the stupider one, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mickey agreed, disoriented and foolishly giddy. Shit, this day was turning out pretty okay. Maybe this would become one of his relaxing memories he’d use when floating over the diameter of the infamous Gallagher Above-Ground Pool. He pulled Ian’s hair and Ian bit the soft skin around his nipple until Mickey squealed.

 -

They were bathed in blue and covered in soap. The sun had vanished and all the light came from the bowl of a cloudy expanse above them, lighting their skin and hair in a muted post-sunset haze. They looked like they were in the space between sleep and conscious, a half dream. They were cleaning themselves on the front lawn with the hose and Carl’s tear-free kid shampoo, still clad in their swim trunks. The sharks on Ian’s were sudsy and vengeful.

The shower was occupied and the boys couldn’t wait to finish their Jason saga. Fiona tried to argue that it wasn’t really an officiant way of cleaning yourself and then eventually waved them off when they convinced her it was. She warned them about kiddie-fiddlers taking pictures of them from afar and told them to hurry it up before it got dark.

Mickey’s mohawk was completely erect and Ian was lathering his chest and reaching into his shorts to make sure the boys were squeaky clean. They laughed and sprayed one another, then took turns taking gulps from the nozzle after one had stuck it down the back of the shorts.

The front door opening was the only thing that distracted Mickey from giving Ian foamy breasts.

Mandy stood on the top stair and leaned over the railing. She was clean and already in her PJs, which were quickly becoming the only outfit she owned that wasn’t skanky. Mickey spit water at her and she gave him the double-bird. “Can’t you see I’m busy giving my client an operation,” he gestured at the two soap mountains melting down Ian’s stomach.

“Very funny. Fiona says to hurry or she’s locking you out.”

Ian waved and grabbed the hose from Mickey to finish cleaning his body. “We’ll be right there Mands.”

“Okay,” she smiled, all soft a flowery and _blech_. Mickey puffed his cheeks like he was suppressing vomit and Mandy shot him sharp daggers before she turned around and went inside.

He did feel somewhat bad about what he said earlier regarding her chest. He knew she was getting sensitive and moody about how her body was changing, but at the same time, all that shit just got under his skin. She was becoming such a girl about every-fucking-thing _imaginable_ , and on top of it, she had the hots for the last person on earth he’d hoped she’d ever go for.

“Hey,” Mickey started, rinsing off his armpit. He really didn’t want to know the answer to this, because it might lead him to dive off a goddamn cliff without a second thought, but he did because it was making him uneasy to the point where he didn’t want to invite Mandy along with him to the Gallagher’s anymore… and then he’d feel bad for leaving her behind at hell’s toilet and oh, fuck. He had to ask before he spiraled. Was he spiraling already? Shit! He was. “Do you like Mandy?”

Ian looked like he swallowed a bug and blinked at the grass. “Uh,” he laughed, “why would I tell her brother of all people if I liked her?”

Mickey did the first thing he could think to do when he was scared, hurt, or he was near shitting his pants. He punched Ian’s arm with his middle knuckle stuck out farther than the others to really dig a knot in his skin. “Do you or don’t you, prick,” he snapped.

“Ow!” he slugged him back and Mickey went in for another hook. “Okay! Okay. No, I don’t,” he swore and then quirked a smile, amused at how worked up Mickey had gotten.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. She’s like a… she’s a sister to me, you know?” he cocked his head like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I don’t think about her like that at all.”

The answer was bittersweet. He felt his heart speed up in hope and then stop dead fear for a moment longer than he figured was healthy. Shit. What did that mean for _him_ then?

Mickey didn’t care.

Yeah, he did.

No, he fucking didn’t.

 _I’m not one of them._ He gnawed on the inside of his cheek until his tooth punctured the skin. “Does that mean you see me as a brother?” he asked, his voice was low and strangled, but he tried to seem nonchalant as he rubbed the side of his mouth with his thumb and sniffed.

He didn’t care.

“What? Oh. No… no no,” he shook his head and then stopped, looking pained and embarrassed with how quickly he answered the question. “No, I mean. I don’t, I mean I _guess_ not.”

“Why not?” Mickey pressed.

Ian scoffed and the looked away. “Just because,” he mumbled, and then the conversation ended, but Mickey got it. He didn’t have to say more. They both got it. The reason would be unspoken, but strung up in the air, always within reach. Both of them were too chicken shit to grasp for it.

They got in a soap fight after instead of letting the tension linger, because that’s what they were best at, being dumb young boys reigned over any kind of foreign budding feeling.

Ian turned him around and slapped his soapy palms on Mickey’s shoulder blades, leaving foam handprints behind with the fingers pointed out in angles. They looked like small wings. “You’re an angel,” he declared like it was fact, and the sun went to sleep.

 -

That night, Mickey had dreamt he was on a gray-sanded beach facing a rushing tsunami. It was a hundred foot impenetrable wall, flying toward him, pushing the ocean like it was on big cohesive mass, like it was half the earth rushing to shore. It wanted to kill him, that much he knew.

He could move.

He turned his head and saw Ian standing beside him, smiling tentatively and holding his hand out in front of him. Mickey turned to face him and he reached to interlock their fingers. The colossal water fortress buckled and folded in on itself with one big raging “woosh”, like a wretched death cry. The water fanned out over the rest of the ocean like limp hands collapsing on the ground, its remains glittering in the uncovered sun, the light splicing through the gray storm. Mickey did not see any of the wave’s demise. He was looking somewhere else.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment or message me on [tumblr](http://witchmickey.tumblr.com) :) feel free to leave questions or suggestions for future kid fics too!


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